


Born In A Grave

by tabaqui



Series: Short Stories and Alternate Universes [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:46:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23070415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabaqui/pseuds/tabaqui
Summary: Steven Grant Rogers was born in a grave.Originally published at my Livejournal  January 25th 2020
Series: Short Stories and Alternate Universes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658011
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	Born In A Grave

**Author's Note:**

> I was poking around online doing some fic research, and came across this: [Lingering prenatal effects of the 1918 influenza pandemic on cardiovascular disease](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2826837/), and my brain went....Steve! So, I wrote this little short thing.
> 
> I also read this: [100 years after ‘Spanish Flu’: Is the world ready for the next pandemic?](https://www.vaccinestoday.eu/stories/100-years-spanish-flu-world-ready-next-pandemic/) and this [The 1918 Influenza Epidemic in New York City: A Review of the Public Health Response](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862336/), just to make sure I knew what I was on about.

Steven Grant Rogers was born in a grave. While his mother groaned and sweated in the smothering heat of a New York summer, bringing forth pale, wailing life, other lives were snuffed out. Across the sea, Belleau Wood and Reims, Soissan and the Marne were groaning under the weight of bombs and bodies. 

And then the flu came, gripping soldier and civilian alike, twisting them in fever heat and bone-deep ague. It circled the globe, Death winnowing left and right, without mercy. On islands no more than dots in the vast Pacific sea, and in the frozen Arctic, people gasped out their final, rattling breaths, just as Steven Grant Rogers screamed out his first.

Forever after, his mother would tell him it was that great 'flu that had made him so delicate. So easily fractured and crazed, egg-shell thin. She had taken to her bed for three days in early May, terrified, alone, curling around the kicking life inside her. His birth, she said, was a miracle. Life from the grave.

Bucky was safe from it, born as he had been in fields and plains, far off and away. No rows of rotting tenements and limp, dingy washing to hem in the air, keeping the smoke of death always one thin breath away.

For years, Steve would imagine that the pall of funeral pyres, and the dust of mass graves were what choked his lungs, and clotted his heart, and dimmed the world to dull colors. Death, jealously, would not let go of Steve's hand. Until Doctor Erksine, and Howard Stark. Until hot, silver radiation and quicklime injections forced that bony grip loose and let Steve, finally, slip his winding sheet.

Turned out, he'd carried it all along, invisible; turned out, it was a coffin of ice waiting for him, instead of cold clay.

Turned out...life wasn't done with him yet, but he still carried in his bones the chill of the grave, and tasted the ash and oil of last rites on his tongue.


End file.
